Mango, Mud, and Marzipan

New Ceramic Work!

Delgado — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:57:40 +0000

Here is the first of my new work to come out of the kiln. I made a soup mug for my buddy Tim, and a porcupine quill holder for my friend Martha. More to come as they get finished, fired, and find their way to new homes. Both pieces are porcelain and thrown on the wheel.

For more pictures, go check out (and like! and share!) OBP on Facebook.

-Raven

Water+Color

Delgado — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:30:09 +0000

I’ve been playing with watercolor. Sometimes Nik gives me projects, “Dinosaur Sunset” which is clearly the origin of one watercolor I’m going to post below. I’m currently working on one from the inspiration of “Daily Muffin”. In any case, here’s what I’ve done below. I would really like to get better. Maybe I’ll take some classes. Unfortunately, these scans are of a pretty poor quality. They all look much better up close. Can you tell I’m distracted? Watching The Walking Dead…but on to the watercolor!

“Dinosaur Sunset”

This last one was a particularly rough scan. Note to self: learn to work the scanner better. Criticism, as always, welcome.

-Raven

Collecting shiny things.

Delgado — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:42:32 +0000

It occurred to me when visiting This Blog: Gnat On The Windshield, that a blog is a great place to keep a loose collection of things I like and want to do. That way, when I get uninspired, or bored, I don’t have to scavenge the entirety of the internet, I can come right to my own little corner of the internet and see what I’ve scrounged.

So here it is, for future reference, various bits of lovely:

Window Farming.

Pretty “Sunburst” / Flower Granny Square. (elusive pattern here)

Super Classy Square.

Blue Afghan.

One of the prettiest granny squares I’ve ever seen.

Until the weather improves and I can return to the potter’s wheel, I’ll likely be fussing over what patterns to use for my mother’s afghan, and what to do with all the yarn I’ve massed.

Wednesday Etsy Finds

Delgado — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:31:26 +0000

Have a look at some of the awesomeness that Etsy.com has to offer:

Nerd + Needlepoint = Awesome

Something that I wish I had the money to buy right now because it would be both useful and beautiful in my life.

Stylish locker magnets, and other things made in mind for parents of young kids.

Gorgeous vintage tea-towel.

Want it! No, seriously, my birthday is coming up!

Lovely colors on this handy water-bottle carrier.

Gorgeous earrings which would go great with that wooden earring bowl.

Lovely silver charms.

Sweet sachet pillows.

One Bird Pottery is back up and running!

Delgado — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:17:05 +0000

Hurray! Rejoice!

OBP

I can’t say it enough, I need to give a huge thanks to Rachael Olek who designed the new banner. Her beautiful work puts my pottery to shame. Getting OBP back up is giving me a lot of impetus to find a studio, so this week I’ll be heading into the city to see what’s possible. Probably I’ll either have to rent kiln space or find a clay that is low-fire enough that I can do some pit-firing. Can you tell that I’m desperate?

I’ll be posting some new photography later, and hopefully also some watercolors. I’ve got to branch out if I can’t be getting my hands dirty with clay all the time.

Could it be that I actually finished some projects?

Delgado — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:05:37 +0000

The answer is Yes!

Stuff and a few more pictures after the jump…

I finished the damn blanket. And it’s small. But it’s done, so I don’t care. It was fantastic practice, and a tremendous exercise in trial-and-error. Now that I’ll be working on my mother’s granny-square quilt I won’t make nearly as many mistakes…like the terrible seams from joining that needed to be covered with a sheet sewn to the back. Yup. Not doing that again.

The pattern for the wrist warmers is courtesy of Crochet Spot. I had to make a few modifications because my yarn (which I have utterly fallen in love with) was not terribly forgiving, so I crocheted in a few extra, shortened rows at the bottom to cover the gap of my lower forearm. I’m making another set for my other half out of sock yarn this time, so we’ll see how that goes!

I’m hoping that the color difference (his will be in muted greens) will help to remove some of the unfortuante cast-effect that wristwarmers have (observe mine in lovely flourescent highlighter colors making you wonder if maybe I’ve broken both arms in a terrifying crochet accident!). That, and the yarn is very thin and delicate for his set. Here’s hoping.

Upcoming projects:

-A collage, sort of.

-Dishcloths? out of the remainder flourescent yarn.

-Niko’s wrist warmers.

-The re-opening of my Etsy shop.

-My mother’s afghan.

-And I submitted a piece of poetry to an online zine. I’m very happy with it, and I’ve got my fingers crossed.

-Assorted other projects too small or ill-conceived at this point to mention.

-Delgado

change of plans.

Delgado — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:54:21 +0000

I’m still on the yarn kick. It’s much easier to face a growing blanket than the painting that’s not finished, and every time I touch it seems to get less finished.

But there has been a change of plans.

Because I fail with patterns unless I can watch them being made. So my fun zig-zag blanket is turning into a granny-square blanket. Granny squares are something I always wanted to learn, and I found a great set of tutorials online ( The Art of Crochet ) and ran with it, learning a few different styles, and laying out the pattern for a blanket. This little project has been very successful so far, except that the backside is an ugly mess from stitching them together, so I’ll have to apply some kind of fabric on the back.

More pictures forthcoming of the blanket/quilt/granny-square-afghan as it shapes up. I’m on vacation now, visiting friends in South Carolina, so I have plenty of time to work on it. Dependent on the success, I may create some for sale for my Etsy: One Bird Pottery, which is getting a shiny new banner soon, and shall be restocked with all manner of treasures. That’s right.

I’m very excited. And I’ve been tossing around the idea of really focusing on my Etsy this summer, buckling down and seeing how productive/successful I can be. Since, well, who knows if I’ll have a job this summer. Long story short, the stars aren’t exactly in alignment, and it’s going to be quite a challenge.

Back to the blanket, mine will definitely not look like this, though I love the design of it. I think I really need to learn how to connect the squares so I don’t have a horrific mess on the back side.

-Delgado

The Latest: A home for the rose / Knee-deep in wool / Scribbles

Delgado — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:47:06 +0000

The ultimate goal remains – to find my own studio so that I can pick up where I left off with ceramics, and do something that I truly love. In the meantime, I don’t really have the cash or the time to take ceramic courses so that I have the use of a kiln and a wheel…so I’m keeping my hands busy in other ways. Lately it’s crocheting. I learned how to crochet when I was about 12, and have on and off picked it up, made something, then moved on to something else. The urge had been creeping up on me, but this past saturday it hit hard and on the fly I decided to drag my fiancee out into the cold to accompany me to the nearest craft store, where I proceeded to buy yarn for a scarf for him, and a blanket for who-knows-what-yet.

Pictures behind the cut, and more about my lumbering through trying to be productive.

Here’s the cutie! I suppose the boy is okay too. The scarf looks pretty short, but it’s going to stretch, especially with the way he manhandles his scarves. The last one I made him turned out twice as long after a few months of wear. I kept this project really simple, single-crochet, all the way through, it had been a while since I crocheted and I wanted to take it easy. But once I finished that I started on something a little more challenging for me, but still pretty easy.

A zig-zaggy blanket!

The colors are a bit wonky, but I’ve been using (for both the scarf and this blanket) a 100% wool yarn, and I’m loving the way it feels, and the fact that it’s not, you know, plastic. Something just freaks me out when I think about wearing or cuddling up with anything that’s acrylic. Eck.

So I crochet when I don’t have the inspiration to paint, craft (or the means to continue with pottery), and I don’t feel so useless or unproductive. Crochet is easy. It’s functional. It leaves my craft area somewhat untouched, and that makes me sad, but I’m thinking it might find some use soon: The Color Project

I, unfortunately, have very weak motivation. I need to invest money, or a deadline into a project for me to be motivated enough to do it. Not so with ceramics, luckily, but when it comes to crafting and painting, Art House Co-op is going to be my godsend even though an attempt at the sketchbook project was an utter failure.

Regarding not so sad things- my Rose has a home!!

My apologies for the wretched picture, but if you can’t tell from the angle, and presence of a fan, the rose is mounted at the apex of a ceiling, about 12…13 feet off the ground. How did we get it up there? My mom and I perched on a two foot ledge (where that vase and plant sit) and very, very carefully drilled the holes for the mounting, lifted the nearly 20 pound tiles up, and prayed that the screws would hold. My awesome friend Rikki also assisted, lifting the tiles, screws, etc. up to us and judging from the floor whether the tiles were centered, straight, and all that good stuff. I thought the piece was hard to mount at eye-level…this was an ordeal to say the least, but it felt so good to finally get it up so that it wasn’t just collecting dust. And it made my mother really really happy. So the Rose of Turaida now lives at my mother’s house, along with a great deal of my other pottery.

Oh, and I think I’m writing again.

-Delgado

The Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary…

Delgado — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:18:56 +0000

…go check it out if you’re ever in Ithaca. I should warn you though, you’re not going to see any birds unless you are super quiet. It’s a beautiful walk, and because the trails are open 365 days/year, I imagine it will be fascinating to visit in the winter. Something I intend on doing.

-Delgado

(Alternate version after the jump)

Pretentious, or Process?

Delgado — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:13:47 +0000

A week or so ago I saw a number of photos on display at local coffee shop, Burritt’s. They were nice photos, I don’t remember anything that stood out particularly except that most of them had the time stamp on their prints, a lot like this one:

I mentioned it to my fiancee, and said that I kind of like it. He scoffed and declared it pretentious. For me, the jury is still out on that call. In a way a time-stamp on a photograph is like drips on a canvas, it’s indicative of the process. Can it really be condemned as amateurish for a photographer to include the time-stamp in their print? I’ve never seen it done with professional prints before, which is perhaps why I liked it so much.

Is this something new? Is it, or will it become, the equivalent of the lens flare? Something to think about where an “amateur” move could be considered either pretentious, or part of the process, art walks a fine line.

-Delgado

Picture from camerahacker.com